Are Link Wheels White Hat or Black Hat SEO?

[KatyaSenina]

Some people claim that the use of link wheels is Black hat and even looks spammy and that Big G doesn't like it.

Others say there is no better SEO.

What's the truth? Or is there a right and bad way in doing it?

Katya

[dmarze]

Link wheels are good for your search engine rankings, but ONLY if you don't over-use them.

[JeffLam]

Being an advocate of linkwheels, I would say it is a little gray hat.

There is nothing wrong with providing good and diverse content on a certain topic you are good at, and THEN linking them to other articles that you have written.

What is WRONG will be if you do so but act in a spammy manner: doing crazy linking for no other purposes than to increase your links.

The key is to make it as natural as possible.

As such, 'making it as natural as possible' in itself is not exactly VERY white hat I would say.

Hence why I said gray hat.

But really, I believe linkwheels are awesome little things for SEO.

[gravtex]

The Big G is against a lot of stuff, link wheels included.

That being said, I consider it a safe tactic as long as you do like dmarze said - use them in moderation and not as your only link building tactic (that applies to all link building tactics - diversify).

Gary

[hotftuna]

If you don't complete the wheel, it should be safer.

Before I ever heard of link wheels, I always flow-charted links between my sites to make sure there was no circular pattern. With links wheels only the target is your site but I would apply the same principle.

[JeffLam]

Yes. Forgot to mention but DO NOT complete the wheel.

If you want it to work, that is.

[KatyaSenina]

Thank you guys! I'm really learning a lot here! =)

[kkchoon]

Linkwheel is just a concept to build traffic and backlinks, you can make it "black" or "white", all up to you!

[warrich]

if you do it in a small scale it is safe , if you do it in large scale then definately it is black hat

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by warrich

if you do it in a small scale it is safe , if you do it in large scale then definately it is black hat

Huh? are you listening to yourself?

[Preciseim]

Don't get too excited about link wheels they are a tiny portion of an overall linking strategy

[jazbo]

Google has stated they now look for such linking patterns, so linkwheels as a structure are dead. Lets be honest here, did anyone think that creating a set of generated content that all linked together would be anything other than a big fat footprint for Google to look for once it got popular enough for them to worry about? I bet Matt Cutts laughed his nuts off when he read about it.

"Lets let them get on with it until it becomes an issue, then just chuck a bit into the algo to spot the ten ton gorilla....." or something like that.

As for the concept itself, I am not convinced that the "power" increase from linking to each spoke of a linkwheel is or ever was worth the effort. Most of the time a linkwheel will sit in the supplemental index UNLESS you power up each created spoke by linking to it.

So my advice is forget linking to each part, and concentrate on good quality generated sites and link to them link crazy to build their power, that way you won't get caught out as easily and you get a more powerful link.

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by jazbo

Google has stated they now look for such linking patterns, so linkwheels as a structure are dead. Lets be honest here, did anyone think that creating a set of generated content that all linked together would be anything other than a big fat footprint for Google to look for once it got popular enough for them to worry about? I bet Matt Cutts laughed his nuts off when he read about it.

Although I don't link those properties together, but I still don't think Google will penalize every linkwheel!

May be they will disregards those links, and they will still continue to give more value to inbound links of each properties, and your main site still benefit from it

Originally Posted by jazbo

"Lets let them get on with it until it becomes an issue, then just chuck a bit into the algo to spot the ten ton gorilla....." or something like that.

As for the concept itself, I am not convinced that the "power" increase from linking to each spoke of a linkwheel is or ever was worth the effort. Most of the time a linkwheel will sit in the supplemental index UNLESS you power up each created spoke by linking to it.

So my advice is forget linking to each part, and concentrate on good quality generated sites and link to them link crazy to build their power, that way you won't get caught out as easily and you get a more powerful link.

With enough links and "trust", anything will rank...

Let's wait and see if there are more complaints about the link wheel. This topic is still red hot!

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by jazbo

Google has stated they now look for such linking patterns, so linkwheels as a structure are dead. Lets be honest here, did anyone think that creating a set of generated content that all linked together would be anything other than a big fat footprint for Google to look for once it got popular enough for them to worry about? I bet Matt Cutts laughed his nuts off when he read about it.

"Lets let them get on with it until it becomes an issue, then just chuck a bit into the algo to spot the ten ton gorilla....." or something like that.

I tend to agree.

crap1 -> crap2 -> crap1 -> moneysite

should be no better than

crap1 -> crap2 -> moneysite

or

crap1 -> moneysite
crap2 -> moneysite

The big difference is the first example and to a lesser extent the second one would make it dead easy for G to spot and discount the links.

I would bet the search engines have read many of the techniques discussed here and either 1. laugh, 2. post positive comments on the value of a worthless technique (tie them up doing this, so they don't figure out a way that really works), 3. Learn more about a technique and come up with a way to squash it.

I'll bet many im products have been purchased by people responsible for spam cleaning of serps. Why wouldn't they do this? It's in effect a war and one side makes all of their "weapons available for the low low price of $x7 dollars if you buy now.

[abuhakim]

I've had a lot of success with link wheels. As an "marketer" my goal is to increase SERP, back-links and traffic. I take the Google search engines for what they are, a machine and a means to an end. While you may be concerned with the ethics of the process, IM's are cashing checks. You can always spend your hard earned money on Adwords campaigns!

[Jusiam]

I believe link wheel leaves a pattern which can be easily picked up by google. I have also noticed that it getting harder and harder to index the web2.0 properties that are created in the link wheel.

I have never tried it but natural looking link wheel might work.Some of my ideas are
1. randomly linking each properties
2. using unique articles to each properties instead of the spun version.
3.Not closing the wheels
4.giving natural looking backlinks to each of the properties.ie, not giving the same backlink to all the properties from the same sites.

Thats only my idea though. I might be wrong.Any suggestions are welcome

[Groovystar]

If you gotta hide it from google to make it work, it's black hat.

I'm not saying 'don't do it.' I'm just calling a duck a duck.

Creating ten awesome websites and linking them to each other wouldn't have to be hidden because they all offer great content and many honest webmasters link their sites to each other, "Here are my other sites!"

But if you're not sure, ask yourself, Am i taking steps to hide this from google?

[camelia]

I don't think link wheel is a very good idea to get backlinks since most of the links there got vanished .

[SEO Agency]

In my opinion link wheel is for good if you use unique articles and avoid spun, link wheel is a good source of traffic if done well.

[dadamson]

Originally Posted by KatyaSenina

Some people claim that the use of link wheels is Black hat and even looks spammy and that Big G doesn't like it.

Others say there is no better SEO.

What's the truth? Or is there a right and bad way in doing it?

Katya

White Hat and Black Hat is up for debate...

Some people say that ANY link building done on your part is Black Hat, and that White Hat is just the natural link building done by genuine people who want to share your website. - I guess Googles ultimate goal is to show these websites at the top.

Link wheels in my opinion are borderline Black Hat. There is definitely a right way and a wrong way about building them.

The right way would be as natural as posible. So the backlinks and profiles are all created at different times on unique C-Class IPs and naturally indexed.

The wrong way (or Black Hat way) would be to create all the profiles on the same date and then ping them all straight away.

In my experience this way can bring quick rankings that fall back after a few days. The white hat way obviously takes longer for the initial rankings but they seem to give stronger more consistent results.

Cheers,
Dave